Back
to Contents...Review:
Sacred 2: Fallen AngelBy Lewis Denby,
covered in bugs and being chased by wolves.

If
there's one thing Sacred 2 is good at, it's being
absolutely enormous. This is one of those RPGs of old,
somehow managing to slam upwards of a hundred hours of
gameplay into an essentially linear world. Quests pour
out of the many cracks around this universe, but
unfortunately it's those cracks that stick in mind first and
foremost.

Interesting point: I can absolutely imagine a lot of
people loving this. It's immediately reminiscent of a
simpler time in PC gaming, and that alone may land Sacred
2 a place in the hearts of many. This is
action-role-playing at its purest: countless monsters,
destroyable with simple clicks of the mouse; endless
character stats and literally hundreds of optional
quests. If that sounds like the kind of thing you're
after, and you're prepared to wait patiently while it has a
few 'moments', then read no further. You'll probably
lap this up.

For the rest, there's far less to love. The narrative
picks up pace after a few hours, but the opening is as
dreary as they come. In fact, I wasn't even sure what
was going on until a good half hour after I first stepped
into the oversized boots of my ballsy female
character. In an embarrassingly poor introduction,
your pal is rather unconvincingly slain by two besworded
enemies, and with his dying breath he urges you to complete
his quest. Whatever that might be. There's an
awful lot of mindless slaying to be done before you come any
closer to realising your goal.

Unfriendly NPCs are as thick on the ground as treacle on
toast, and it's rare to go more than thirty seconds without
another morbidly depressing encounter. The Witcher
proved long ago that point-and-click combat could still work
in modern 3D engines, so Sacred 2 feels badly dated
in its wake. The engine seems to respond far too
slowly to the left mouse button and, in the early stages
before you begin to level up, often decides to make your
character miss entirely. From half a metre away.
With an enormous stick.

In fact, the engine seems badly lacking in a great number of
areas, from visual prowess to base-level stability.
The pre-release screenshots looked stunning; what's happened
since then to create this ugliness? The fact is, this
is an engine that excels in its rendering of close-up
detail, yet more often than not the camera swings around
high above the heads of the characters. If you get the
chance to zoom in, then sure, it looks rather pretty.
From a distance, however, things become a little messy and repetitive.
A fitting analogy for the game itself, perhaps.

"...

wait
while it has a few 'moments'..."

It runs awfully on anything but the most modern computers,
and I'd hate to think what attempting to play with the
minimum spec would be like. Even if you can get it
running smoothly, it won't be long before you find yourself
slamming your head against the desk at the sight of yet
another ridiculous bug. One piece of dialogue looped a
total of eight times before finally stopping halfway through
a sentence. Enemies all over the place pop up out of
thin air and begin surprise attacks. Occasionally,
clicking on essential items does absolutely nothing.
This was not ready to be released.

I finally gave up when I suddenly realised that, for the
past god-knows how many wasted hours, I'd been slaying
wolves that dropped goldwhen killed. If you can forgive
this, and the rest, then - blimey - you're the new
messiah. If you're a mere disciple, look elsewhere.

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